Large numbers of England cricketers, both past and present, will be recategorised as non-England players as a result of plans being drawn up in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

A member of the Leave campaign explained: “One thing this referendum has told us is in no uncertain terms is that the British public have no time for nuance in the matter of national identity. We are therefore looking to impose a clear definition of who can and cannot represent the England cricket team.”

Asked what this would entail, he continued: “We all know that there are only two kinds of immigrants – the good kind and the bad kind. We need to distinguish between these and the obvious place to start is with a person’s place of birth. We all know that British people are born in Britain and, ideally, in England.”

Under the proposals, current England cricketers including all-rounder Ben Stokes and current one-day captain Eoin Morgan would be immediately excluded from the team. However, players born overseas who have represented England in the past would also be expunged from the records.

The Leave spokesman demanded the immediate resignation of England’s director of cricket, Andrew Strauss, who was born in Johannesburg, and listed a number of other players born outside the UK who would be struck from the history of England cricket. One of the players mentioned was Basil D’Oliveira, about whom the spokesman said: “He should have represented his own country.”

It seems highly unlikely that the project will stop there, however. The spokesman said that birthplace would merely be the first of a number of criteria that would need to be met to ensure eligibility. “Take someone like Moeen Ali,” he said. “Moeen was born in Sparkhill in Birmingham, so if birthplace were the only criterion, he would be considered English – which is plainly ridiculous.”

People, there’s no point in being downhearted and depressed. What happened happened. As American politician Dick Tuck is supposed to have said, “The people have spoken, the bastards.”

But what are we here if not English? That is, fans of the England Cricket Team. We are the people who suffered worse than Brexit. We suffered Aus-shes, 18 years of Australian domination at a game we invented. And were we sad? Were we disheartened? Yes, of course we bloody were. But we were also blindly optimistic. And the key word in that phrase is “blindly”. We were able to put facts and reason to one side and get on with planning the winning party. In our minds Darren Gough was as good as Glen McGrath, Alec Stewart was as good as Adam Gilchrist, and Phil Tufnell was as good as Shane Warne. Maybe not the last one, but you know what I mean.

But did you see the impact of Brexit on the cricket? Since the vote, England has not lost a wicket in international cricket. Set free from all that EU red tape, our English batsmen can play unfettered by worry about foreigners moving into their street.

Extrapolating, that means we will at least draw all the matches we play. Except ODIs and T20s, which we could still lose with ten wickets in hand. But still…

Serious question for a moment, is the Bosman ruling used as the basis for all of the Australians and South Africans with Dutch/Irish/other European grannies being allowed to play county cricket? If the UK backs out completely from treaties that automatically give work rights to foreigners would this dilute the standard of first class cricket?

As we understand it, the Kolpak ruling basically recognises that the Bosman ruling also extends to countries with associate trading relationships with the EU as well as EU countries themselves.

So yes, if things do actually start to move, this could have an impact if the ECB allows it to – and history implies that they probably will. Don’t think it applies any more, but for a while the fudge was that counties were essentially fined for fielding Kolpaks.

Currently Kolpak players need four-year visas, which helps keep numbers down. We’re not entirely clear whether the ECB are happy with current numbers or not. They might be, in which case there might not be too much change. They would be able to impose limits though, if they wanted to.